Great Freedom, Austrian director Sebastian Meise’s unflinching sophomore feature, opens with a Super-8 montage of men having sex with each other in a public restroom. At first, it appears to be a sensual moment, but moments later we learn that what we have just seen is police surveillance footage from a hidden camera used in a police sting to convict men under Paragraph 175, a subsection of Germany’s criminal code that outlawed homosexual acts between men up until it was abolished in the late 1990s.
This footage is how we are introduced to Hans Hoffman (Franz Rogowski), a scruffy middle-aged man who has just been sentenced to two years in prison without probation under Paragraph 175 in 1968. After standing up for fellow inmate Leo (Anton von Lucke), he gets thrown into solitary confinement, which leads the film to unlock other parts of the narrative. Here, the story then jumps back to 1945, when a much younger Hans is jailed for the first time after surviving the first part of his sentence in a Nazi concentration camp. Later, the interweaving timeline transports us to 1957, when he is once again jailed, this time with his lover Oskar (Thomas Prenn) and former cellmate Viktor (Georg Friedrich), who was convicted for the much harsher crime of murder.
While Hans has his fair share of lovers throughout his time in prison, Meise and Thomas Reider’s script chooses to orbit around the evolving relationship between Hans and Viktor, who identifies as straight and is initially hostile after discovering that Hans is a gay man. After Viktor sees a tattooed serial identification number on Hans’ arm, his demeanor changes, and he offers to help cover the tattoo up in one of the film’s most intimate scenes, ultimately resulting in the formation of a bond that spans decades.
Meise’s approach to focusing on three distinct eras over the course of Hans’ life is a clever one, as the non-linear structure creates a raw portrait that never feels inconsistent or rushed. Every time the story weaves across timelines, we learn a little bit more about Hans. Although the script doesn’t provide us with much detail about him and his life beyond his experience through these periods, Rogowski manages to fill in the blanks and imbues much depth to him in order to craft a fully-realized person.
Rogowski continues to prove that he is one of the most exciting international actors right now — whether it’s in supporting roles in Victoria and A Hidden Life or his multiple collaborations with Christian Petzold, Transit and Undine, his presence remains captivating. With Great Freedom, Rogowski once again manages to make it nearly impossible for you to take your eyes off of him. Subtly transforming throughout the different stages in Hans’ life, he undergoes a drastic bodily transformation to reflect the passage of time across the two decades. The script gives Rogowski the space to elevate a character who could easily not have had as much substance on paper, often using his body language to portray vulnerability and humanity. Friedrich gives a fantastic performance as well, bringing a softness to the initially tough Viktor, as well as also losing weight to portray Viktor’s struggle with drug addiction.
With Great Freedom, Meise sets out to make a sensitive and tender exploration of queer oppression in post-war Germany and the damage that Paragraph 175 has done to the lives of so many people. Buoyed by Rogowski’s breathtaking performance, Great Freedom is a quietly stunning character study of a man who is forced to operate within the confines of a system that continues to punish him for his desires.
